Figures Suggest Marketers Are In No Rush to Go AMP

Despite the heavy marketing coming from all direction via Google, a recent study carried out by SEO PowerSuite shows marketers are in no rush to go with the new accelerated mobile pages or AMP as its also known. Accelerated Mobile Pages have been pitched to us as the next stage in content evolution and Google wants you on board.

We’ve raised our concerns about the AMP project in previous posts, though, and it seems something is stopping marketers from signing up to the project. So what’s putting marketers off Accelerated Mobile Pages and should you resist the urge to jump on board?

What the study says

First of all, let’s cover the key points in the study we’re talking about. The research project by SEO PowerSuite surveyed 385 SEOs from the USA and Europe to gauge the awareness of AMP among the SEO community and the adoption of it so far. Here are the key points outlined in the study:

75% of SEOs are aware of AMP

50% of SEOs expect AMP to have a significant effect on ranking

23% of SEOs surveyed currently implement AMP

42% of SEOs are still researching AMP before making a decision

It’s still early days for AMP, of course, and you can expect those figures to change drastically in the project’s favour over the next year or so. Our team at Hot Click is still in the 42% that’s researching and weighing up AMP and we know a number of reasons why many SEOs still aren’t sure.

Implementation will be complicated

This is the first barrier between marketers and business owners between AMP but we don’t think it’s the most important. AMP is new to everyone – not just to business owners and marketers – but even the developers who have to code the technology.

That leaves a lot of room for complication in these early days but this is the norm with new technology. AMP will become second nature to those who implement it soon enough and the marketers who do probably won’t look back.

Important or not: Not really.

It strips a lot of marketing tools

AMP strips out the majority of JavaScript and other resource-heavy elements from pages to achieve those quick loading times. The downside is this strips out a lot of the marketing tools the majority of websites rely on to generate leads and make money.

You can kiss goodbye to popups, email signup prompts, the current crop of on-page ads and just about everything that generates leads from a page of content. AMP is working to devise alternatives for these types of lead generator and ads are already working their way into the project. So this will also get better with time we’re sure. How better we have no way of knowing at this stage.

Important or not: For now, very, but less with time.

AMP is designed for publications

More than the technical concerns with AMP this is actually a far more relevant issue for marketers. The AMP concept was originally designed for publications like news websites where content is everything – for users and the publications themselves.

AMP will help your blog pages perform faster and rank higher but you can’t suddenly turn an eCommerce site into AMP. The functionality required simply doesn’t work with AMP. This will be the same for any online shopping process, validated contact forms or any page with real functionality.

Important or not: For commercial brands, yes.

It surrenders your content to Google

This is our biggest concern with AMP. When a user clicks an AMP link or decides to share it that link will point to Google.com, not your own domain. You’re effectively handing over your content to Google and cutting out many of the benefits that come from publishing content in the first place.

This is similar to how Facebook’s instant articles work and its designed to keep users in the Google (or Facebook) environment. Which raises a whole new bunch of questions about the traffic, analytics and conversion potential of traffic that comes through AMP. Questions we’re not getting a lot of answers to.

Important or not: Er, yeah.

As you can see, there are some fundamental reasons marketers and business owners are hesitating on the AMP front. As the technology progresses the reasons will become increasingly smaller. We can’t see AMP failing at this stage, considering how much weight Google is putting behind it. And we know Google will certainly win out of the AMP transition; the question is how much will website owners get out of the deal?